Topics Ethics

Question What if a person continues to wish evil, (e.g., that someone dies) but is only refrained from action (murder) by practical concerns (such as fear of incarceration)? What is the moral difference between that wish, and the act? (Btw, thanks Nicholas D. Smith for your excellent answer [to a related question: http://www.amherst.edu/askphilosophers/question/974].)

Accepted:
March 6, 2006

Comments

Obviously, there are better reasons for desisting from some evil wish than others--it would be better not to murder someone, when you experience the wish, because you feel some compassion for others who might grieve the death, or because you realize that you could never forgive yourself for such an act...and so on. Worse reasons might include: Someone pays you not to knock the so-and-so off! Wishing to avoid incarceration is also not a very noble reason, as you notice--but it is understood by lawmakers (following the deterrent theory of punishment) as the very kind of consideration that is supposed to deter people from such crimes.

The best person, it would seem, is one who does not even wish for such things--bad things, that is. But it is hard to be perfect--and few (if any) of us are...so we end up wishing for things it would be better not to wish for. Applying something like a Kantian universalizability principle, however--consider which of the following principles we would universalize:

(1) Whenever one has an evil wish, one should act on it.

(2) Whenever one has an evil wish, one should suppress it.

Since both (1) and (2) equally concede that the evil wish is there, any additional evil in either one cannot be explained in terms of the wish itself. But there is plainly some additional evil in (1), and some movement towards the good in (2).

Consider it another way: Suppose someone wanted you dead. Do you see any significant difference between their wish...and their actual willingness to act on that wish? I am guessing that you do.

I think at the heart of this is something generally called the "harm principle." Mere wishes don't harm people, even if they have some negative value as aspects or symptoms of character. But actions really can and do harm people. Your wish to harm me doesn't actually do so. Actually doing so, accordingly, is far worse than merely wishing it.